Purchase Audition Report

College Majors Theater/Drama Majors
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<p>I decided to put this in a separate thread rather than in the “checking in” thread so it would be easier to search for anyone looking for info related to audition process at Purchase. I will later have separate reports on Juilliard and Rutgers. </p>

<p>Purchase Report:</p>

<p>First, someone at that school needs to understand that first impressions are important. As has been reported many times, the buildings aren’t much to look at. But at least when we visited last Fall, you park at the front entrance by admissions that has a lot of green and feels like a college campus. For auditions, everyone goes to a back parking lot that faces the back of a drab building so all you see is parking lot and building. Then, as if you think it can’t get worse, the route to the dance building takes you through an alley of cut up concrete with two drab buildings at either side. At this point, you have yet to see grass. It is no wonder that people who may only audition at Purchase come away with a particularly negative feel of the space. In the Fall visit, we got to see lots of grass and trees coming as well as the fabulous theater spaces as a balance to the buildings. </p>

<p>As to the audition itself, it does have a bit of an assembly line feel to it given the number of people coming through but I thought all the students helping out were very friendly and informative and all seemed to have a favorable view of the program. I think the choice to use a dance studio for orientation where all parents and students had to sit on the floor for an extended period of time as maybe not the best choice. Us plus 50 set don’t get down and up quite like they use to or at least I don’t. I can’t even imagine what my wife would have done who has trouble getting up from a chair as she waits for double replacement knee surgery.</p>

<p>At lease for our visit, the applicant pool and students were a more eclectic mix than we saw at CMU or Rutgers. As for the prior subject of dress for auditions, about the only dress style I did not see was the spike heel MT look. There was a guy in a suit, girls in formal looking sweaters, every variation of jeans from nice to ripped, and dresses of every style. It has been reported before that there is a certain look at CMU. My daughter met most of the 1st year class during sleeping back weekend and that certainly seemed the case. At Purchase I think it is safe to say there is not a particular look or dress either. Though if I had to categorize the look I would say it leans far less to “pretty” and more to edgy or distinct. These are, of course, observations based on very small sample sizes. </p>

<p>At the introductory remarks, the students once again emphasized what has been reported before that no call back does not mean no admission. They said they were aware of students getting in without a call back. They were pushed a bit on this and held fast to view. </p>

<p>Students were then broken up into three groups where they saw three different faculty. The particular student for the group my daughter was in let the students pick who wanted to first. My daughter and another student both picked first so my daughter ended up second. I can’t imagine the theory by which it would be better to sit and wait almost two hours to go (which is how long it took to get through the groups) but there were plenty that wanted to wait till the end. </p>

<p>Different from other auditions she has been at, Purchase did the interview first. She was not expecting that and she said it threw her a bit as she was in the zone to go ahead and do her pieces. She felt she recovered well and had a good conversation about the intensity of the Purchase program and how that was one of things that attracted her. One of the students had mentioned a program she had left to go to Purchase because that program did not have enough studio time for her tastes. They discussed this and he said to her yeah that program is not for you. She felt she did her pieces as well as in prior auditions. </p>

<p>Next was three hours of waiting from going early until call backs were posted at about 4. Call backs were about 8 of the 50 or so auditioning. My daughter did not get a call back. It would be nice if the favorable responses she has had to date including being offered at the audition during her U of Arts audition and favorable comments and a hug from Barbara a CMU would offset no call back but I don’t artists are wired to think like engineers. For about an hour I had to go through the process of building her back from the depths. </p>

<p>Later that night, I applied more of my Internet research skills (developed digging up ammunition for depositions and trials in my day job) to go through College Confidential and whatever else I could find on whether there is any possible truth to no call back does not mean no admission. In addition to the one reported her where some at a Purchase audition claimed the 7 people he met at the audition were all admitted (which I discounted as a bit hard to believe), I did find one specific post from a Purchase student saying that he personally knew a student in his company admitted without a call back. I also had a private message with a student starting this year who also said she had heard of students getting in without a call back. Finally, my daughter met students at Rutgers day who said they personally know students who got into Purchase without a call back. </p>

<p>I am sure there is a measure of just rationalization here now that my daughter did not get a call back. I think there is a case to made – and the Purchase faculty may well have made it – that my daughter is not a great fit for the Purchase program. I get that CMU is a long shot but she is probably a closer fit to what CMU looks for than what Purchase looks for. But since one can think about this either way, until we hear otherwise she might as well keep a bit of hope alive. </p>

<p>Lawyers are great at falling in love with their side of the case and losing objectivity in placing facts to support their case. My other “facts” to support this view is that my daughter appears to have been assigned to the room where the most senior of the Purchase faculty doing auditions was in and the day had gotten very late so he must just have decided there was no need to see her again! </p>

<p>Oh well, nothing to do but move on to the next one.</p>

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<p>We made the mistake of scheduling Purchase as my son’s very first college audition. Talk about building somebody back up from the depths! :frowning: You and your daughter were smart to schedule hers when you did, ActingDad.</p>

<p>I’m sure your daughter is going to have further fine acceptances and will end up at a school that is wonderful for her.</p>

3

<p>Thank you for such a detailed report. I’m looking forward to the other two.</p>

4

<p>ActingDad, it’s hard to bear disappointment with our children. If she doesn’t end up being accepted at Purchase, I’m sure your D will have other acceptances. Almost NO ONE gets accepted to all the places they audition at. Not getting accepted to one place means nothing at all. And the actor has to build thick skin. A lot of rejection comes with the business. Rejection doesn’t mean your’e not talented. It means that for whatever reason, they think you’re not a match–for the role, the school, whatever. </p>

<p>When I was in middle school, I once heard Isaac Asimov speak (the famous science fiction author, who passed away several decades ago). He was lovely and kind. At the end, he took questions. One girl asked him what advice he had for writers. His response was quick: He gestured out with this hands to span about a 12-15 inches, and said: “To have skin THIS thick” </p>

<p>Please give your D a hug from me. I’m willing to bet she will find a great match for herself.</p>

5

<p>I really appreciate this actingdad! Looking forward to your other reports. I’ll try to pay it forward next year, if my daughter goes through the process.</p>

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<p>ActingDad…so hard, so very hard. I have no doubt your daughter will find her home, though. Just hate seeing them go through this. I hope my son remembers the lesson he learned from an earlier audition, once this is over, it is over. Time for the next one. Actually, I really hope I learn it too…</p>

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<p>I don’t know if there is any truth to the “no call back, no acceptance”, but I believe it is a possibility. Lots of kids audition at all the top-tier schools, with many getting acceptances at more than one. Well, they can only go to one of the schools!!! Even if Purchase accepts more kids than they really want, there are probably examples where lots of kids say NO to Purchase (didn’t like the program, campus was a turn-off, whatever) and Purchase found themselves going to other kids who may not have gotten a call back but were “in the pipeline”.</p>

<p>So hard to go thru this as a parent, let alone as the kid! Best of luck at your next stop, ActingDad. Look forward to reading more of your experiences. This will be invaluable to those who will go thru this in coming years. And at that time, you will be heading off to see your D in one of her productions - college production, that is!!!</p>

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<p>ActingDad, thanks for such a detailed report. I realize my D is tech, so the process is different, but I like knowing what the kids go through regardless of their concentration. I really don’t know how they handle this kind of pressure. </p>

<p>I wish your daughter the very best! I know that she will end up at the best possible place for her.</p>

9

<p>I’m trying to find the name of my auditor…I was told he was the ‘2nd Year’ Professor, he was in the room with a senior in the “2nd Year Studio”. Anyone know his name???</p>

10

<p>MarbleHeader – I don’t think your scenario – going through all the call backs – can be the scenario where no call back could still be an admission. I will get to the Rutgers report in a moment but the two kids handling the audition said both received admissions and did not get invited to the call back weekend. They were explicit that the rationale was the school saw all they need to see. The one post I saw from a Purchase student at least made the assumption that the kid he knew who got in without a call back was because the school had seen all they needed to see at his first audition. And one of the students at the auditions said something along the lines of call backs are for those who are maybe. </p>

<p>Not sure what to believe re: Purchase but the only scenario with any logic in which no call backs could still be an admittance would be ones they were certain of based on the initial audition. The same as Rutgers explicitly said was the way call back weekends were handled at least last year. There is no way Purchase could possibly have all the call backs say no and have to get to the list of people not called back.</p>

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<p>Sorry, just trying to give you a little hope. </p>

<p>Still wishing you guys good luck in the coming days.</p>

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<p>ActingDad: you said “I get that CMU is a long shot but she is probably a closer fit to what CMU looks for than what Purchase looks for.”
What do you think CMU looks for and vice versa? Also, how did the CMU audtionees dress?</p>

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<p>Dreambelle13 – these things are just impressions but they have been discussed on here before. There was a prior thread here about whether looks are important and there was quite a bit of discussion about CMU in that thread. I would suggest searching that thread. I think I’ve said the extent of my impressions. I don’t think its worth worrying about from an audition stand point. To the extent there are real differences in what the schools look for, you can’t really control those things. As to dress, I’d say the big difference was there just quite a bit less variation at CMU – skirts and tights, some dresses, some nice jeans. More uniformly “put together” than the larger variation at Purchase.</p>

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<p>As to the no callback thing–we went through this last year, parsing and re-parsing both Rutgers and Purchase’s mercurial statements. The Rutgers statement was vehement and there were also two kids on site who claimed that they had had no callback. But what did that mean? When they claimed that last year, they’d had no weekend callbacks at all, so NO one had extensive callbacks! Last year, Rutgers tried a new thing, a weekend audition you were invited to after the auditions (as, say, Guthrie does). Also, at the audition, they also had immediate callbacks, more like interview. Then in addition to the weekend callback, they ALSO had another last minute full day callback. So in Rutgers case, did they mean literally no callback at all? After all that? Perhaps they no weekend callback. I don’t know. IN Purchase’s case, they have the single callback. They USED To say ‘no callback, no interest,’ as with Juilliard. </p>

<p>All I know is it makes no sense to me that if you have 100s of students, sometimes over a 1000, for a 15 or 20 student placement, that you would go with a single audition over a callback. </p>

<p>I don’t know why they are so vehemently saying it ‘means nothing.’ Last year, we didn’t know of anyone here on CC for whom that was true. Correct me if I’m wrong. Honestly, I’m sure anything is theoretically possible, but if you don’t get a single callback or interview, I would assume no interest. Personally, having dangling over me a vague unclear possibility would drive me insane. I would personally rather move on. At best you can be pleasantly surprised.</p>

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<p>Also - and I say this to help figure out how to deal with things, not to add salt to any wounds - kids who get called back also quite often get rejected. So if I had a kid who was feeling extra hopeful about a callback (or extra time or attention or any of those things), I would still just say, “Anything can happen,” as I would with any school. I would say the same with schools where things seemed to go wrong, too. You really just never know until you get that notification.</p>

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<p>I just have to say, I know our kids are heading into the cold hard harsh world of acting filled with auditions with infinitely more rejections than acceptances unless you are Meryl Streep, Idina Menzel or Lea Michelle. But, in this process, lets just all commiserate on how awful it is as parents to greet your kids after hearing that other got a college audition call back possibly at the school of their dreams and yours didn’t. When you know there is nothing you can say to them and whatever you try to say will get your head chopped off and you and your kid have agreed to not react emotionally at the audition location. Ok, may we all have a moment of collegiality here as parents and kids and say its awful. A communal hug (((((()))))). Thats all, I just had to say that. ( ok and now will come the comments… if you can’t handle it get out… I know)</p>

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<p>I’m with you mom2gals. It is hard, and people are getting frazzled since it is really right in the thick of audition season. So hard to just move on after things don’t go well - or are thought to not have gone well - and pouring over old CC threads seems non-productive since all the schools change it up as they see fit. </p>

<p>So if they tell you to “go sing Kumbaya somewhere else”, I’ll join you. I’m an alto, by the way . . .</p>

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<p>Alto here, too, Marbleheader, and it does seem like group hug time. Much harder to be upbeat in the depths of winter than it was back for those first few pre-Christmas auditions… I have to strike my usual “in-case-you-didn’t-notice-I-teach-high-school” note and say that for high-school teachers and college counselors, April really is the cruellest month, as we see so many kids watching their classmates rhapsodize–in person and, now, on Facebook–about acceptances while others are experiencing rejections or the dreaded purgatory of the wait-list. Somehow most of them end up very happily ensconced in the fall, even if it isn’t at their first choice school. I’m trying to remind myself of that fact after every audition weekend right now! (two more to go…)</p>

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<p>Times3, you MUST write a “cruellest month” parody poem!</p>

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<p>^^Oh wow, after reading/thinking through the poem, I see your point–you really could adapt that sort of Impressionistic/narrative thing to the audition process as well as to the “waiting for letters” limbo of March. Brilliant! :D</p>